African Inspired Mudcloth (Feb 2023 Conference) by Mary Kate Jenkins
Despite the collecting and prepping of materials for this project being a BEAST this time of year in my region, I was really looking forward to this conference project the most. I have never done anything like this before and I was curious to see if I had interpreted the directions correctly when fermenting my mud. There is a forest preserve near me that I almost exclusively use for gathering nature crafting materials and I was happy to be able to utilize it's mud for this project.
This made my garage pretty stinky, but I think it was worth it. I prepped a lot of pieces because I knew I wanted to make a garland or prayer flags out of them once I get the chance to sew them together. For designs, I chose to integrate symbols meaningful to myself, symbols that are traditionally used in Maliyan mudcloth, and symbols from my cultural heritage.
I did end up using a hair dryer to speed up the process of the mud drying. In my experience, the cloth looks better air dried after a dip in the tannin bath.
